Everything is a toy, an object
by flecksofpoppy
Summary: Written for the 2011 Chocobo Races at ff exchange. Prompt was: "Insanity is not so easily defined and is not as linear a process as most people seem to think. How did Kefka become the man  monster?  we saw in game?"


Written for Chocobo Races, October 2011. Prompt was: _Insanity is not so easily defined and is not as linear a process as most people seem to think. How did Kefka become the man (monster?) we saw in game?_

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><p><strong>Everything is a toy, an object.<strong>

Kefka Palazzo rises to infamy the same way that oil rises to the surface of water and separates. He takes great joy, and nothing but joy, in arranging his men into different formations that remind him of pieces on a chess board.

But Kefka is not philosophical. He doesn't see a metaphor; he sees small toys. Horses, men, kings, knights; little figures made of black and white marble that move around a checkered board.

Kefka likes patterns. He likes bright colors and dizzy spinning silk; he particularly likes the touch of silk, velvet, cotton against his skin.

He remembers deep in dreams what his fingertips felt like before the ice, the fire, the terror of trembling with power, exhilaration.

Kefka remembers his fingers sometimes, before they were burned with magic. He remembers those textures; and then it's like a distant dream, like a fluttering flag bearing the Gestahlian emblem. Just another meaningless image; another taste, another texture, another pattern that simply combines into a world that he does not live within.

In the labs, he remembers a younger woman, hair shining the same color as his own. She doesn't seem to be able to speak; nevertheless, he goes to her where she receives her treatments.

_Would you like to be my sister? Are you my sister?_

He sits and talks to her; she is a child compared to him, although Kefka has never quite understood the definition of age. He sits in the labs and whispers to her what they will do together, even though her eyes are always closed.

Their hair is the same color. That means something, doesn't it?

The first time Kefka laughs is after he's sent a bolt through an underling's head for a reason he doesn't remember afterwards. The sounds are keening, sharp crow-calls that drive everyone else in the room to try and escape, and he kills them one by one. He realizes, in that moment, how simple it is to clear the board when he's tired of the game.

But somewhere deep in dreams, he hears that sound as the final cry, the death call.

The next time he laughs, he takes a scarf-the silk paisley one-and gags himself to stop. He tries to swallow it. He tries to absorb the colors, tries to put himself out of his own misery the same way that the Empire did the last failed Magitek knight.

He pushes it so far down his throat, he passes out, and it's only when he wakes up strapped to a table that he realizes he's still alive. And then when he laughs, there is nothing to stifle it.

The Emperor makes him dance. He makes him demonstrate his skills, like a clown, making pillars explode, freezing people in the street, burning houses in the night from long distances away. The Emperor points, indicates, tests.

He makes Kefka dance, makes his fingers burn.

Dr. Cid has different models of Magitek armor in his lab. They're delivered to him for tests, great humongous monsters made of metal.

Kefka, who now comes and goes as he pleases since he can sense the good doctor's fear as an animal can smell blood, admires them.

"Masks?"

"They're considering changing the model," Cid says nervously, smiling with a tic in his face. "They say the soldiers can't see too well with the head pieces on the armor."

Kefka likes masks, likes strange artificial expressions in blank spaces.

Due to the infusions and some chemical mix-ups, he occasionally becomes confused about simple things; so he rubs snow on his face because it's white. He picks up handfuls of it and rubs his face until it's red; when he looks in the mirror, he screams. He's red; so much blood in his face rising to the surface, there in his skin.

When he finally figures out the difference between pigment and frozen water ("_Ice magic is actually frozen water_"), he paints his face white. During the night when he does sleep, it rubs off on the bed, and in the morning he simply reapplies more.

There's no blood in chalk; there is no water in the oil.

Kefka is napping like a dog of war.

Gestahl has stopped his fires, and Kefka learns of espers. They are not his sisters or brothers; they are his. They are his pieces, his playthings, small crystals that jostle against each other, precious, colored jewels that he knows will determine the end of the game.

But he knows that _he_will absorb these colors. He will not choke, and he will not dream. He will not feel, and all at once, the board that is this world will bend under his hand; this malleable, disgusting world will cease to be. This is his will.

Kefka finds, now, that he has a will. There is not yet enjoyment, there is not yet lust, but there is a _will_.

"My Emperor," he says, kneeling, "thy will be done."

Kefka looks at the board and sees them all checking in.

As he stands looking out over the land, the silk he cannot feel through the scars on his fingers flutters in the wind, and he barely notices. It is simply a moment, a movement, a physical abomination since it is caused by this corporeal world.

_Thy will be done._

Kefka Palazzo rises to infamy as oil consumes water.

There is a scar on his throat where they had to cut out the fabric he tried to swallow, but it cannot be seen beneath the white make-up.

When the slave crown is invented, he makes the half-esper captive kill half of his men, to test, to burn. She succeeds, and he smells death.

He finds it exhilarating. Death _means_something; but because Kefka feels nothing, it is fascinating since it ends one state and begins another.

He thinks on it, and in his dreamless sleep, somehow, there are surges of energy in his body that rocket through him like the pangs of magic exhausting his essence.

He thinks on it: one state that ends, and begins another.

He says, crossing the desert with his with many colored silk scarves, "Polish my boots so that they shine as brightly as marble."

And the soldiers do, trembling in the wind.


End file.
